Liveblogging the debate. Romney missed an opportunity to go hard at Gingrich for his attacks on him for his Bain Capital background. Perhaps he’s soft-pedaling it because he’s so far ahead in South Carolina, but I expected him to say more than “people can look at my record;” I expected him to punch hard at Gingrich for “anti-capitalist” rhetoric.

Perry and regulations: this is empty rhetoric, and he’s avoiding Bret Baier’s question.

UPDATE: Good question from Gerald Seib about Bain Capital and free enterprise. Romney is answering it with civics-class cliches.

UPDATE.2: Does anybody other than journalists give a rip about negative ads on principle (as distinct from the content of particular negative ads)?

Santorum seems more lively, less rigid and jumpy than in the past. Good attack on Romney on the felon voting issue. Santorum has a position that won’t help him much with conservative voters, but he did a surprisingly good job slapping Romney around for that negative Super PAC ad. Still, the unflappable Romney is not being flapped.

UPDATE.3: Boy, is Gingrich an afterthought in this debate, or what? Ron Paul too. They’ve hardly gotten a word in. The Romneybot just drones on.

UPDATE.4: Lisa Schiffren:

This is sad. Newt doubles down on his mostly outrageous claims about Romneyand Bain. But he couches it in the highly legitimate and important context of whether Mitt can defend his record, and explain what he was doing, financially, in closing many of those companies, because he will be pushed on the issue in the fall.

And then Mitt proves Newt right, by responding with a short version of his resume. Never addresses the core accusation — which he should be able to respond to on the merits.

The problem — Romney is a man of action. He is articulate enough for that. But he is not articulate or analytical enough to make the larger, more abstract, and critical point.

Gingrich on getting 99 weeks of unemployment: “99 weeks is an associate degree.” He indicates that people who have been on unemployment for that long are to blame for their situation. It’s an effective line, rhetorically (the associate degree line, I mean), but is it really the case that someone who has lost his job in this chronically depressed economy is not working after nearly two years because he or she is lazy? I don’t think so.

Gingrich had another killer line about Obama: “The best food-stamp president in American history.” Again, red meat for the base, but it’s pretty cruel in my view, given the sustained economic crisis. 40 million Americans are on food stamps now. Does Gingrich really believe that all those new people who started coming onto the rolls after 2008 and the crash want to be there?

I thought Paul’s answer on defense spending in South Carolina was a dodge, trying to make a distinction between “military” and “defense” spending that sounded in his explanation like a distinction without a difference.

UPDATE.5: Why is Paul talking about an “inflation tax”? The inflation rate is what, 3 percent? He sounds like an ideologue, by which I mean someone who is not going to let reality interfere with what he believes. He says we shouldn’t have an income tax at all. Well … that’s a position. But we are not going to have no income tax in this country, and it makes Paul look flaky to assert this.

UPDATE.6: Santorum had a pretty decent answer to Juan Williams’ question about blacks and poverty. Citing a Brookings study, he said that marriage prior to childbearing has a big role to play in keeping people out of poverty. He said that the Obama administration, as a matter of policy, insists that federal programs aimed at preventing teen pregnancy can’t advise kids to favor marriage, rather they have to remain neutral on the question. Said Santorum, “The problem is, neutrality ends in poverty.” That’s a great line. Anybody know if this is true, Santorum’s claim about the Obama rule? Santorum’s is by no means an adequate answer to the actual question, to be sure, but his is a useful point.

There goes Gingrich with the food stamp thing again, blaming Obama for “putting more people on food stamps than any president in American history.” It wasn’t Obama that did it, Gingrich, it was the depression recession. This is food we’re talking about. This is people struggling to feed their families in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And Gingrich is playing racial and cultural politics with it. To listen to Gingrich, you’d think that Obama signed up all those layabouts for food stamps just so he could throw government money at them.

UPDATE.7: I have no clear idea what Ron Paul’s view on the killing of Osama bin Laden is. He’s squirming to explain it. (By the way, did you know that former CIA anti-terror chief Michael Scheuer endorsed Ron Paul?) I appreciate Ron Paul standing up to the rest of them, and the booing audience, on endless war. Gingrich and Romney have said tonight that we have the right to go anywhere and kill people who threaten Americans.

Romney said we have to have a military “so strong that nobody would ever think of testing it.” That’s just cant. Did al-Qaeda attack us on 9/11 because they thought America’s military was weak? Look, Ron Paul is squirrelly and will not be elected president. But listening to these Republicans talk as if there were nothing to be learned from the Iraq and Afghanistan experience is maddening, and deeply worrying.

UPDATE.8: Go Santorum, saying we ought not to give Social Security bennies to millionaires! It sounds ridiculous that that should be a bold statement, but for a presidential candidate to call for a form of means-testing Social Security is something new.

It seems to me that Santorum is having a surprisingly good debate. Gingrich started poorly, but he’s warmed up. It’s been a poor showing for Paul, I’m afraid. He’s seemed addled. Rick Perry isn’t even in the game.

UPDATE.9: Great line from the Economist’s live blog:

This is Jon Huntsman’s best debate by far.

UPDATE.10: Romney had a couple of good zingers against Gingrich on the Super PAC thing, forcing Gingrich to admit that Romney can’t do what he wants him to do, and for calling Gingrich’s anti-Romney Super PAC ad “the biggest hoax since Bigfoot.” I still don’t understand why Romney is not tearing into Gingrich about that ad, unless he figures that he’s got more to lose by drawing attention to it.

UPDATE.11: So, who won? Well, look, it was depressing. But aren’t all these debates depressing? I’d say Gingrich had the best night, followed closely by Santorum. Romney, bland and robotic, for the most part. Biggest disappointment was Ron Paul. As for Perry, well, he’s a cartoon, ain’t he? He’s dragging bottom in the polls, and seems to exist now to throw bloody chunks of flesh into the crowd for effect. I must say that I thought Newt was over after Iowa, but to give him credit, he’s kept this thing alive. True, he’s something like 11 points behind Romney in South Carolina, but after tonight’s savaging of Romney by both Santorum and Gingrich, it’s conceivable that Gingrich might pull off an upset — but only if the Santorum vote coalesces behind him. To be fair, Santorum had a pretty good night too; conceivably the anti-Romney vote could coalesce behind him. Tonight’s debate did not clarify who the anti-Romney will be, however. There’s one more debate in South Carolina, on Thursday, two days before the January 21 vote. That showdown is going to be decisive.